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Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Nell

Seen at the Fullerton Station waiting for the Brown Line to the Loop at about 8:30 a.m.

The
last time she went to visit her family in Kenosha, Nell packed all the battered
paperback books she’d read in elementary school into a cardboard box.

“Oh,
are you going to give all those to the library?” her mother asked. “That’d be a
nice thing to do.”

“Nope,
I’m taking them back to the apartment.”

“But
why? You haven’t read them in years, and you’re certainly too old to read them now.”

“The
nineties are back in a big way, Mom, and I’m going to do it better than anyone
else.”

The
box now sits in the corner of Nell’s cramped bedroom. Every day she selects a
book and tries to dress like one of the characters on the cover. This morning,
for instance, she pulled out one of The
Baby-Sitters Club series. The drawing of Dawn caught her eye immediately.
As she unfolded the dog-eared pages and attempted to straighten its warped
spine, Nell pondered how best to capture that breezy California look. (She’d
actually always preferred the California
Diaries spinoff series to The
Baby-Sitters Club anyway.) Finally,
she grabbed a pair of Day-Glo orange pants and a faded jean jacket. She brushed
out her blonde hair, and when she looked at herself in the mirror, Nell saw
Dawn Schafer looking back out at her.

So
far nobody has noticed her efforts, or at least nobody has ever said anything.
But Nell has faith that there are other bookworm-children-turned-fashionistas
out there like her. One day someone will look at her, smile, and compliment her
for looking so Scholastic Book Fair chic.

That's right, I'm bringing it all the way back to my childhood today. You know you loved the Scholastic Book Fair. Although, personally, I preferred the BSC Mysteries to the regular Baby-Sitters Club books. What were some of your favorite childhood series?